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Now that the end of this Ludum Dare 31 is close, I’d like to make a postmortem about my game “Winter is Nigh!”, that NEEDS MORE VOTES PLEASE! FOLLOW THE LINK AND DESTROY SOME ENEMIES! 😀

Some people say it’s difficult, but probably they did not get the shotgun, or they might say otherwise. I dare you to play and get as far as you can!

Protip: Shoot, and shoot, and shoot.

Well, let’s “postmort” this thing step by step:

PLAYER:
What went right:

Jump&shoot. Simple but efficient system of arcade game to defeat anything that moves. By shooting. In the face. I wanted a game fun for me, and this might have been the best way.

Temporary invencibility: When an enemy touches you, it gives you some time of invencibility before any other damage hurts you. This prevents multiple explosions and enemy touching from killing you in a second.

Powerups!: There are three levels of power, and a double weapon upgrade. This gives the player a lot of advantage, and it’s essential to resist assaults from the sixth/seventh round and upwards.

Your master at the background is proud if you reach his sunglasses third level of power.

But, these powerups are entirely random, with fixed rates of appearance, which makes the game… Wait, let’s leave this for next point.

What went wrong:

Way too random powerups: They make you feel powerful, yeah, but only if they appear. Some powerups appear too often: “Another double gun?”, but sometimes, none at all: “I need health!!” Maybe I should have disabled attack powerups if user already had them, so that at the beginning they are more frequent, and at the end, health is the only one the user would need. This would have fixed some problems users had with difficulty.

Bullets starting position: Player weapons are big, so the bullets start quite away from it. At first, it was intentional, to avoid users to get too close to the enemies, but it’s become more of a nuissance to all of us. I wanted to add a short distance attack, like the knife in Metal Slug, but time ran out.

ENEMIES
What went right:

They are crazy. Besides the snowman, even I was surprised about suns and exploding red country balls trying to smash you. I tend not to take the art of a Ludum Dare game too seriously. Graphics are important, but a game developed in such a sort time needs some weird elements. It needs to feel fresh, new. Nevertheless, they remain more realistic than those of my #29 Ludum Dare entry. (Check it out in this link!)

Lovecraft would be so proud.

IA and explosions: I got them jumping and flying in short time. They need more detail, but at least I got them working before due date, which is better than expected. I like the idea of having the red ones damaging other enemies as well when exploding, not just the player. This makes this enemy an interesting one to kill at specific times, where it benefits you the most. Also, they are dangerous ones if nearby. Hm… now I see it: they should have had the ability to explode on purpose.

Hi!

What went wrong:

Waay too fast: They tend to accelerate instead of moving at a fixed speed, so, sometimes, they rush upon you from the other side of the screen, and BAM, you’re dead, or worst: surrounded by exploding red beings.

Enemy spawn might be unfair: Now you’re happy and alive, now you have a Snowman in your face right on the middle of the island. Maybe they should appear always on the sides…

LEVEL
What went right:

Random platforms: Every round and game had to be unique, so it swaps platforms randomly when a round ends. I think it’s a nice system to force the player to adapt in many situations, and also, get some surprise sense of danger when no platform appears. To the record, lower platforms have a higher probability, and only if these are present, the upper ones are able to appear. No upper platforms should be created if the player can’t reach to them, don’t you think?

Round mechanic. Eventually, the game became addictive to me, and I suddenly started to waste too many time testing… Errr I mean, playing. This might mean that the game is not all that bad, but as the programmer I kind of lost the sense of difficulty, by getting better and better in my own game. This goes right to the next point…

What went wrong:

Difficulty: Just like happened last time with my Ludum Dares #30 and #31, maybe my games need to be easier at the beginning. I tend to get better at them while testing but I usually forget how difficult it may seem to new players.

OTHERS:
What went right:

2D and 3D graphics: I did not expect much, bit it seems people like the style as much as me. I specially enjoy 2D gaming, but I think 3D has lot to offer to these games. Paper Mario, or the new Zelda do this really well.

UI text! In my previous titles I always had problems with unity UI, specially when being short of time. But I got some health bars and text working pretty fast and quite beautiful ones.

Explosions: They must sound strong and surprise the player. I think they worked really well, just like my previous games, but now bigger ones. I might be getting better at drawing and animating them again and again, just because I like my explosions a lot. This time I added some repelling force, based on Mike Geig’s Fun with explosions, but in 2D.

What went wrong:

The title! Naming is hard, and this game has every crazy element I could think of in those 48 hours, so I had no idea about what title should I use. Snowman came to help, and the sun and theme-forced island did the rest, but… I expected some other name with much more thinking into it, not just a summary of 47 hours in the forty-seventh one 😛

The theme: Okay, it’s a single screen, in a single island… but I couldn’t think of a better idea, so it simply stays within the theme, without being great either.

It needs more juice! Screenshakes, changes of color when damaged, those kind of details that make a game rich. I always recommend Vlambeer’s “The art ofscreenshake” video. I just need to manage my time better so I can get it working.

What went missing!

Ability to shoot upwards

Gun/Machine gun that doesn’t need the player to press the attack button repeatedly.

More enemies

But time ended, so these couldn’t enter on the compo properly. Maybe a future new version would include them!

This competition is great. No matter how many times I lose motivation during the year, that a Ludum Dare comes and both the theme and the time frame turns me into a game making machine (a humble and basic one yet :P)

I’m surprised too, as I find myself enjoying voting and playing others games just as much as making the game! Specially when people rate my game! And even more if they complain about difficulty! Wait, I shouldn’t enjoy that… but it’s nice when people takes time to find bugs, problems, hidden secrets, and get into the game, enjoying something you created.

I need more of this, so please rate and complain about my game! 😀

Gravitousis a space-action-shooting-slingshot-graviting game where you need to destroy all robots (or weirdly constructed sprites, aka programmer art) by firing lasers while graviting from planet to planet. Be careful! Dark space is dangerous, so travelling needs to be done among different planets, with different gravities and colors and things.